all the world's a stage
by dress without sleeves
Summary: Movieverse. It's the Avengers. Only . . . instead of saving the world, they're performing, or not performing, Shakespeare. Because this is actually the sort of thing that goes on in my head. / This is what Phil Coulson gets for going to art school.
1. phil coulson hates his life

[interval I: bruce]

"Right," says Bruce as the spotlight flickers and dies with a sad whining sound and a few weak sparks just as Tony launches into Hotspur's "My liege, I did deny no prisoners," monologue in scene three. The auditorium shutters into darkness and silence, until Phil's resigned sigh breaks the pause.

"Sorry?" Bruce offers, calling down from the rigging. "That was—I'll fix that."

He can imagine Phil running his hands over his face. "Every _time_," Phil says. "_Every_ time. It's like—are you doing this on purpose? Is Fury behind this? Is this some sort of passive-aggressive way of telling me that I am going to go over budget? Because: _I know._"

"Um, actually," Bruce answers, "the circuit just shorted. I think—I mean, I can fix it. Probably. No, definitely. I mean. Yes. I can."

"Right," says Phil. "Everybody take five."

.x.

"Are you _sure_," Phil begins once they get out into the lit hallway, and Natasha says, "shut your mouth, Coulson."

"Cleopatra is an _iconic_—"

Natasha clicks off the power button on her walkie-talkie and shakes her hair free of her headphones. "I told you when I took this job. I am _not. playing. a lead._ So unless you want Steve in a toga—"

"All right, all right," Phil cuts her off before she can finish, shuddering. "Please desist from putting images of a cross-dressing Steve in my mindplace, thank you. Oh—is Barton back yet?"

The redhead checks her watch. "He lands in an hour. I'm going to meet him at the airport. Do you think you can manage to keep Bruce from setting the place on fire while I'm gone?"

Phil shoots her the kind of Look he usually reserves for Tony and Renee on _Mob Wives_. "I _am_ actually your boss, you know," he reminds her, and Natasha grins.

"Sorry. Do you think you can manage to keep Bruce from setting the place on fire . . . _boss_?"

He sighs. "I'll allow it," he says as a loud bark of laughter comes from the direction of the water fountain, where Tony and Theodor—oh sorry, he goes by _Thor_ now (thanks, Tony)—are soaked to the bone, for reasons Phil does not care to explore. "Go, before it's too late."

But when he turns back to look at her, Natasha is already gone. From the water fountain, Tony shouts, "Hey, Coulson, _check this out_," just as Bruce comes sprinting in from the auditorium crying frantically, "No Tony _don't,_ the fountain is—"

Phil looks up at the ceiling as the water fountain rips loose of the wall as if his infantile employees had strength and thinks to himself, dryly: _this shit would never happen at the BBC._

.x.

[interval II: clint]

Natasha meets him at the airport, screaming, "No, I said we wanted _black widows_, what the fuck am I going to do with tarantulas? What sort of Duchess of York is dressed with _tarantulas_?" into her cellphone. She looks exactly the same as she had the last time he'd seen her.

Her dark red hair hangs loosely around her face, shorter than he remembers, but she still favors pencil skirts and button-downs that leave little to the imagination. Natasha has both always and never cared about her appearance; she dresses as a form of psychological warfare. She reminds Clint of an assassin: all stealth and no fingerprints.

"Don't you hate it when they send you the wrong kind of poisonous spider?" he asks by way of greeting as Natasha hurls her Blackberry into her purse with a snarl of disgust.

She looks up at him and given him a hard smile, the only kind Natasha Romanov ever gives, and stamps a sharp kiss onto his mouth. "Well, well, Clint fucking Barton. Welcome back, asshole. You look . . . tan."

He grins. "California plus UV rays equals irresistible toast-colored skin."

"That's _not_ what I—oh, fuck you. Is that all your stuff?"

"I only packed my prettiest dresses. I wanted to impress you."

She rolls her eyes. "Well, let's go then, Princess Diana. And I hope you brought your game face because the stage is a fucking _catastrophe_."

.x.

[interval III: clint]

She fills him in on the drive from the airport: Phil's repeated and failed attempts at staging _Antony and Cleopatra_, Bruce's continued desperate incompetence at lighting, and the ever-burgeoning ego of Tony Stark, Shakespearean Actor.

"Phil has given me costumes and stage management, _finally_," she tells him, "but frankly, I could give two shits about the set, so."

"Hence the 2AM weeping into my answering machine."

"I was not _weeping_, douchebag." She cuts him a glance out of the side of her eyes. Clint knows that look, and the snap judgment that comes with it. Back when they were sleeping together, it had meant: _undress_. He's not really sure what it means now.

Natasha pulls into the hotel and lets the valet open the door for her. "Room 211 with the luggage," she says, handing the boy a fifty-dollar bill. Clint flicks his sunglasses off the top of his head and follows her inside to the bar. He relaxes against the booth and feels his shoulders loosen; it is his sixth summer staying in Room 211 of the Westin. It's probably the closest thing Clint even _has_ to a stable home.

"So what's my budget this summer?" he asks after ordering a whiskey. "I heard they fired Whedon, so it's got to be at least a _little _more enormous."

She shakes her head. "Oh, that's the other thing," she says flatly. "Think you can do it with whatever you've got in your pocket?"

Clint raises an eyebrow, patting his pockets theatrically. "Sure. The Bubblicious I bought at the airport will definitely be as secure as nails."

But he's already thinking about how to build a set without tools, without wood, without _anything_. He can maybe—if he only—and if he does that thing with the—

Natasha grins, feral, as she watches his face. "It's good to have you back, Clint," she says, and they clink their glasses together.

.x.

"My liege, I did deny no prisoners," says Steve, and manages to look both grim and pleased at the same time. "But . . ." he looks down at his hands and sighs. "I remember, when the fight was done, when I was dry with rage and extreme toil, breathless and faint, leaning upon my _sword_, came there a—" the auditorium fills with the sound of Steve's teeth grinding, "—a certain—" his voice twists with annoyance and becomes heavy with irony, " . . . _lord_."

"Oh, for God's sake," says Tony from backstage, "just _spit it out_, already. There's another, like, forty lines in this monologue. At this rate I'll be asleep or ear-raped by the end of it."

Steve relaxes out of Hotspur's military stance and glares over stage right. "'Ear-raping' doesn't exist, Stark," he growls.

"It will if you don't pick up the pace!" Tony shouts back.

Phil straightens out his eyebrows with his thumbs. "Boys," he says in a warning voice, "seriously, I am _begging_ you here, can we just get through _one scene_ without heckling?"

Tony emerges from stage left, hands in the air as if surrendering. "Heckling? Who's heckling? I'm giving him acting notes. It's constructive. Rhodey, Happy, back me up here—"

"Constructive? You're like a nagging wife except I didn't choose to marry you!"

Thor leans over the back of his chair and drops his head so that he is looking at Phil upside-down. "Hey boss, you think we should just stage the fight scene and let them kill each other? It'll be our most realistic premiere ever." He pauses. "Also it would be _awesome_."

Betty pauses highlighting all of Lady Mortimer's parts and glares in reproach over at Thor; Peggy, still dressed as Lady Percy, grins.

"We should give them guns," she suggests.

"Swords," Thor disagrees.

"You two are _terrible_," Betty scolds. "Can you imagine poor Bruce trying to light all that blood without too much glare in the reflection?"

"_I'm quitting_," Pepper's voice says into his ear from the stage manager's box above the stage. "_Seriously, I can't take it anymore, working here is like slowly drilling a hole into my head._"

Phil drops his head against the chair in front of him several times.

"Tony, stop giving Steve acting notes. Steve, ignore Tony, you know he's an idiot. Now let's just get through this, _please_."

The light on Steve flickers a couple of times. "Sorry!" comes Bruce's voice. "Sorry, sorry. It's okay now. It should be okay now."

Phil looks at his watch. "Okay, fuck it," he announces, "everyone go home. Let's call it a day."

.x.

"You're over budget," Nick calls from his office as Phil walks passed.

"No I'm not," Phil yells back without stopping. "I'm not over budget because we don't _have_ a budget, we have a black guy with an eye patch that hemorrhages all over the stage floor whenever we so much as spring for coffee!"

"Tony buys in bulk from _Starbucks_!" Nick shouts after him, standing in the doorway as Phil gets into his car. "From _Starbucks_, Phil!"

He pulls his door shut and slams his head against the wheel so that the horn sounds. "You deserve this, Phil," he tells himself. "This is what you get for going to art school."

.x.

[interval IV: steve]

When everyone has gone, Steve stands in the middle of the stage and waits. After a few grunts and flickering light, Bruce calls down, "My lord, these letters are for you." He sounds like he has a tool in his mouth.

Steve thinks for a minute, then says, reverently, "I cannot _read_ them now—o gentlemen, the time of life is short! To spend that shortness basely . . . were too long if life did ride upon a dial's point, still ending at the arrival of an hour. And if we _live_! We live to tread on kings! If die, brave death, when princes die with us!"

He frowns, walking towards the front of the stage and looking out into the empty audience. "Now for our consciences, the arms are fair," he promises, and means it, _means_ it, "when the intent of _bearing_ them is just."

There is the sound of Bruce clapping against a light fixture. Then the technician swings down off the catwalk and slides down one of the pillars onto the stage. He lands heavily. "Seems right to me," he says. "Sounded good. Was the light too bright?"

"Just a shade blinding," Steve tells him regretfully. He wants to tell him it was perfect, but, well. He's morally opposed to lying.

Bruce sighs, rubbing his dirty hands on his pants. "_Damn_ it. Okay. I can fix it. I mean, I can _probably_—well, you know."

Steve claps a comforting hand on his shoulder as they walk towards the door. "I really think you're getting better," he says, and it's not a lie, but maybe a bit of a stretched truth. "Really."

Bruce brightens. "Thanks, man," he says. "Need a ride home?"

"Nah. I came on the motorbike."

He watches Bruce hop into his car and pulls his helmet over his head. "Now for our consciences, the arm are fair," he repeats to himself, trying to find the right weight of the words. "When the _intent_ of bearing them—when the intent of _bearing_ them—_when_ the intent . . ."

.x.

Nick Fury looks at the expenses book and the empty petty cash drawer and draws doodles of killing the entire company with paper clips.


	2. jane's only recourse is to get drunk

Uuuum. I have no excuses.

all the world's a stage

[interval I: bucky]

"The thing about Tony is that he's an _idiot_," Steve says, shaking the frying pan. The bacon rewards him with a satisfying sizzle. "I mean, the man has talent, I'll give him that. But take that away and what do you have left?"

"A genius billionaire playboy philanthropist," says Bucky around a mouthful of pancakes.

Steve rolls his eyes. "He's not a _genius_," he argues, "and for that, you get no bacon."

Bucky kicks his feet up on the table's third chair. Their apartment is easily the shittiest one in town, and they both make—well, okay, _Bucky_ makes—enough for them to move somewhere better, but this was the apartment they bought the first year after college, when Bucky was still in the army and Steve was just starting out as a starving artist.

(Steve is still kind of a starving artist.)

Anyway. They're both kind of attached to the place, with the collection of wine bottles in the living/laundry/guest room, Iago the Rat that perpetually eats the last slice of pizza no matter where they hide it, the coffee table made out of Steve's DVDs and Bucky's Xbox games, and the hole next to the drain in the shower that luckily just drips into the basement and not on anybody's head.

"He's inarguably a genius," Bucky says, and takes a piece of bacon when Steve slaps his palm to his face. "I mean, the man went to Harvard at age, like, twelve. He has like ten degrees. I think he once passed the bar for _fun_."

"Okay," Steve acquiesces begrudgingly, "but he's still an asshole."

Bucky grins. "Methinks the lady doth protest too much," he says, leveling his fork at Steve's chest. "Methinks the lady wants in the pantaloons."

"Okay, first of all, you've put _methinks_ in the wrong place. If you're going to quote Shakespeare at a Shakespeare actor, get it _right_, for God's sake. And secondly, I want nowhere _near_ Tony Stark's pantaloons. If _anything_, I want to get him in the boxing ring and knock the pompous shmuck out of him. Put that asshole on the ropes."

"Yeeeeeeah," says Bucky dryly. "I know ya do, buddy."

.x.

Phil gets to the theater before anyone else. This is his ritual. He likes it. The auditorium is quiet and peaceful, and he can pretend that he works for a legitimate theater company with serious actors and not the circus he actually runs.

Jane always arrives half an hour after Phil, and brings him coffee because Jane is a beautiful, perfect woman. "I got a call from our dear executive business director this morning," she tells him as she makes herself comfortable on the couch that Tony had installed as a gift the first time they managed to get through a production without any walkouts.

"Don't mention that man's name to me," Phil says darkly. "I hate him, because he is evil."

"Yes," Jane agrees placidly. "But unless you want to let Tony finance the production again—"

"Oh God, _please_ don't remind me of 'Timon of Athens,'" Phil interrupts, taking an enormous gulp of his scorching hot drink and then coughing painfully. "That was a _disaster._ Literally _two_ people came, and those were Thor's grandparents."

Jane shrugs. "Well, maybe that's because you decided to put on _Timon of Athens_," she says dryly. "Seriously, Phil, nobody does 'Timon.' Probably Shakespeare himself did it like, once, and then gave it up."

"I happen to _like_ Timon, as a character," Phil argues defensively. "I think he has certain, I don't know, _chutzpah._"

Jane sighs into her coffee and straightens her skirt. "Okay," she says, "what I'm going to do now is pretend I didn't just hear you try and use the word 'chutzpah,' painfully white man. And then I am going to remind you that, as the founding board member of this company, I actually _can_ tell you want to do. And what you need to do is get along with Nick, or at the very least, at least _pretend_ to follow the budget he lays out for you."

"_Ja-a-ane_," Phil begins, but Jane holds up a hand to silence him.

"Do not forget that I have spies everywhere and I will know if you pull a Coulson on me."

"Pull a—?"

"A Coulson, yes. As in that thing where you say one with a perfectly bland, straight face—like, for example, 'Of course Jane, your wish is my command'—and then judo-chop me from behind with, oh, say, a fog machine and _actual bears_."

"It is in the _stage directions_!" he calls after her as she leaves the room.

.x.

[interval II: clint]

Most of the company is already at the theater by the time Clint arrives. This isn't new. For all the summers he has been coming back here, he has never managed to get in before nine; he can't if he wants to go to the shooting range first, which he does, because if he doesn't he'll probably kill himself before lunch.

"Bar_ton_!" Theodor cries when he sees him, leaping off the stage and sweeping Clint up into a man hug that lifts him off his feet. "Long time no _see_, man! Good to have you back!"

Clint half-laughs, half-wheezes as Thor puts him back on the floor. "Uh, yeah, you too, Theo."

"Ah-ah, it's Thor now," Peggy announces, clapping one side of Clint's face hard enough to sting and kissing the other. "Tony was just looking at his perfectly chiseled chin one day and thought: the man is a literal god. So there you have it."

Clint raises an eyebrow in The—sorry, _Thor_'s direction. The other man rolls his eyes, shrugs. "It kind of stuck," he says sheepishly.

"I give you SHIELD, ladies and gentlemen," Clint announces dryly. "Home of demi-gods and billionaires." He looks around the auditorium. "And yet we're performing in an auditorium that is probably bleeding asbestos."

"The company is 'Shakespeare in Elizabethan Drama,' Barton," barks the stern voice of Nick Fury, who has emerged from backstage. "And we haven't the budget for any of your usual shenanigans. No towers, no turrets, as little paint as possible, and if you even _mention_ the words 'rotating' or 'trap' to me, I will fire you."

Clint tosses The Management a salute. "Got it."

At that moment, a force stronger than even Thor's crushing hugs barrels into him. He lets the wind get knock out of him and then glances down, alarmed, at the arms around him. He grins. "Hello, Darcy."

"Clinton, you lazy fuck, you didn't call to tell me you were coming! I am going to beat the actual shit out of you." She pauses thoughtfully. "Also, you never gave me back my Boys II Men CD, and don't think I didn't notice."

Clint spins in her grip and gives her a tight hug. "I brought it in my bag. I know better than to steal from SHIELD's associate administrative director."

"Because . . .?"

"Because she will burn my village and plunder my women."

Someone clears his throat. "I think the bigger question is: why are you still listening to Boys II Men?"

Tony and Bruce are leaning over the railings of the auditorium's catwalk. Tony offers Clint an air-five, which Clint does not deign to return. "Really?" Bruce asks, bemused. "_That_'s the question? Not about Darcy burning villages and plundering Clint's women?"

"_Please_," says Darcy. "You should _hear_ some of the calls we get from subscribers. I burn and plunder a thousand times before _breakfast_."

"Okay, people," Phil interrupts, clapping Clint on the shoulder, "let's get this show on the road."

.x.

They begin with the second scene, partly because Phil still hasn't been able to find a good Westmoreland but mostly just because Phil likes it. Happy and Rhodey sit on the edge of the stage as Phil puts the finishing touches on his notes.

Tony, who can't sit still to save his life, paces back and forth.

"Okay," says Phil. "Okay, so this is what I want."

Ten minutes later, everyone is where they ought to be, and Phil—who has always been a fan of giving his acts room to improvise—sits back and watches the scene's first run-through. He never gives blocking on the first go: he lets them do what feels right.

Tony, despite being, well, _Tony_, has extraordinary talent for knowing what is right. And though it is never anything Phil has ever seen before, it is always perfect.

Today he comes onstage on Happy's back, head lolling to the side as if high or drunk.

"Now, Hal," says Happy, panting—though Phil knows that Happy could carry Tony around with one hand and not break a sweat—"what time of day is it, lad?"

Tony sits up, grinning drunkenly, and props his chin on the palm of his hand, resting his elbow on Happy's shoulder. "Thou art so fat-witted—with drinking of old sack and unbuttoning thee after supper—" he pauses thoughtfully. As if it is has just come to him in a memory, "and _sleeping upon benches_ after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou dost wouldst truly know."

He drops to the stage and stumbles to the wall, sliding down into seated position and propped up as if against a tree. "What a devil has thou to do with the time of the day?"

Phil sits back. This, he remembers occasionally, is why he works here. Tony and Happy move fluidly, confidently—though Tony more so, as is appropriate for Prince Henry—and with them the words seem to make more _sense_ than they do on the page. This is why Phil got into Shakespeare to begin with, why he lets Nick Fury yell at him, why when Jane Foster mentioned she was starting a Shakespeare company, he blindly agreed to be artistic director.

Rhodey enters and Tony says, "Good morrow, Ned." Phil smiles.

.x.

[interval III: natasha]

"Spiders, huh?" Bruce asks quietly, peeking over her shoulder. "Cool."

The costume, set, and light directors all share a workspace, so Natasha is used to Bruce and Clint stealing glances at her designs. She pushes the paper away. "They sent me the wrong spider, so I'm reworking it."

"But is the Duchess of York even _in_ this play?"

Natasha shrugs. "Phil will do 'Richard'next."

"I thought he wanted to do 'Antony and Cleopatra.'"

"He _always_ wants to do 'Antony and Cleopatra.' _I_ want him to do 'Richard.'"

"Oh." Bruce looks at her and then nods. "Yeah. That makes sense. I'd probably do what you told me to do, too."

Natasha levels him with a look. "Okay: fix the lighting," she directs flatly.

"Er," Bruce says. "Right. Yes. Okay. I can do that. I _will_ do that. There is a slight problem with the—okay, I can see by your face that you do not care, so I'll just—"

He scampers off, and Natasha shakes her head. She has no problems with Bruce beyond the fact that she has no patience for incompetency, and even less for an incompetency that comes not from lack of ability but from nerves. And yes, she realizes that maybe what Bruce needs is a nice pep talk or to get laid, but Natasha is _really_ not interested in doing either of those things.

Clint chuckles from his desk. "Go easy on the man," he tells her, kicking his legs up onto the table.

"No," she says simply, and looks back down at her half-finished King Henry design. (Natasha does not 'go easy.') She had been stuck on the costume before Clint came back from California, but now she is beginning to see what it's missing: the crown is too small. She wants 'uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,' to be as close to _literal_ as she can make it.

She'd stack bricks on Doc Yinsen's head if she didn't hate the aesthetic. It was too . . . _Brechtian_ in its approach, and Natasha hated Brecht. Epic theater was stupid. It took all of the manipulation out of design, and where was the fun in that?

"Brecht again?" Clint asks, sounding amused. "You have your rage-face on."

"I don't have a rage-face," Natasha counters.

"Tasha, I have known you since you were eighteen. You have a rage-face. You're wearing it."

"Kindly remember that my father was KGB and I could _literally _kill you, Barton." Clint raises his eyebrows, and Natasha grins. "All _right_, you smug fuck, I was thinking about putting bricks on Doc's head and then realized it was way too . . . heavy-handed. Subtlety is the key to theater. Smoke and mirrors. It's brainwashing at it's finest."

Clint drags his thumb against the tip of his pencil. "You realize that you are legitimately scary sometimes," he tells her.

Natasha shrugs. "I'm Russian," she reminds him.

.x.

They manage to get through until lunch without anybody killing anybody else or setting something on fire (though, to be honest, Phil has just the _tiniest_ inclination towards using fire in theater).

"Good job, everybody," he says. "Let's break."

He gets halfway to his office before he remembers that he has left his cell phone. He turns around and starts walking back—which is when he smells the smoke and hears Natasha cursing in loud Russian.

Phil stares at the closed auditorium doors.

Then he says, emphatically, "_Nope_," and walks back to his office.

.x.

[interval IV: jane]

When the fire alarm goes, Jane's first instinct is to rush to the auditorium and ring Coulson's_ neck_, because seriously, _what did she_ _say_ about fog machines?

Of course, she should have known better.

Tony is sprawled onstage with a black eye; Steve has a split lip and is covered in sawdust; Theodor is wrestling with a growling Roomba, demanding to know where "the kill button" is; and Bruce is scrambling to up the pieces of a broken light fixture while Natasha yells at him in Russian.

Clint Barton is calmly measuring the length of the new hole in the backdrop.

Jane rubs a hand over her eyes. "What happened here?" she asks Peggy and Betty, who are playing cards and ignoring the chaos onstage.

"Steve punched Tony," Peggy says without looking up. "Got any eights?"

"Go fish," says Betty.

Pepper's comes over the loudspeaker. "I hate actors, and I am quitting." She pauses thoughtfully, and then adds, "and Tony had it coming. But that's _it_, seriously, those are my _last_ two cents because I am _wiping my hands_ of this place and its stupid actors because this is like, it's like children or my _parents_, my _God_."

Jane sighs. "So Steve punched Tony," she says. "And Theodor? Bruce?"

"Unrelated," Betty tells her, though her voice gets a little soft. Everyone but Bruce knows she has a crush on the light director. "Nines?"

"Go fish. And it's a _little_ related," Peggy disagrees cheerfully. Peggy gets _far_ too much entertainment from the health hazard that is this company. "Steve punched Tony, who—because he's Tony—freaked out and got all _I AM THE FACE OF GENIUS_ and started blindly attempting to hit back, but Steve went to military school, so mostly he just succeeded in pushing him hard enough against the backdrop to rattle the lighting."

"Which then promptly fell," Pepper's voice adds.

"_How can you hear us_?" Jane cries, exasperated.

"She's Pepper," Peggy and Betty say together. Pepper doesn't deign to answer.

Jane pinches the bridge of her nose. "So the lighting fell," she prompts.

"And took poor Bruce with it," Betty notes. "But luckily, he landed on Steve—"

"—who fell back through the backdrop (which Clint has to redesign now, by the way)—"

"—and into the pile of sawdust that we haven't cleaned up yet. Give me your Jacks, I know you have them."

Peggy raises an eyebrow as she hands over the cards. "She says 'we,' but she _means_ Jarvis," she says. "Seriously, what do we pay that guy for, besides sassing everybody?"

Jane gives up. "And the Roomba?" she asks dully.

No one answers. Betty and Peggy look at one another, and then up at Pepper's stage manager's box, but the silence comes like a shrug.

"Uh," says Peggy, "I actually . . . don't really know about that one."

Jane flips open her phone and dials Darcy. "Fire everyone," she says into the mouthpiece.

"Sure thing," says Darcy. "You and I can play all the parts. It would be very _avant-garde._"

"Do you still have that bottle of Cointreau in your office?"

"The one you told me to get rid of? Absolutely not. No. I would _never_ disobey a direct order and—"

"_Darcy_."

"Duh, Jane. We work at a _zoo_. What do you think 'lunchtime' means? Sandwiches?"

"Break it open. I'm on my way." She snaps shut her phone. "Anyone who wants to get shitfaced on Darcy's dime and forget that we work here, come with me," she announces.

Peggy and Betty put down their cards. There is the sound of Pepper turning off the loudspeaker as she scrambles out of the box.

.x.

Phil is hiding in his office when Pepper stumbles in, clearly drunk. She is wearing a suit, because Pepper always wears suits, and slams a piece of paper down on his desk.

"This is my _resignation_," she slurs firmly. She tips a bit and steadies herself against the chair. "It says that _I quit_."

"You can't quit," Phil says.

"Well. I do."

"You _can't_," he says again.

Pepper makes a small whining sound and slumps into the chair across from him. "But I _hate everybody_," she complains. "I hate Tony and Bruce and Steve and Thor and Natasha and—no, wait. Actually. I like Natasha. And Clint. They do their jobs. That's . . . that's _good_, Phil. We should hire more people like that."

Phil nods. "Yes, we should."

"But the rest of them! The rest of them! I hate them, Phil! I have these dreams where I—and there is fire, Phil, so much _fire_ . . ."

She trails of dreamily. Then, "but Jane. Jane can stay. And Peggy. And Betty. And Darcy. They are funny, and Darcy, Darcy brings alcohol. I _like_ alcohol. Go fish! That's what Peggy and Betty do all the time! You think they are going over notes _but they are not_. And so! I quit."

Phil considers jumping through his window to his death, but he is on the first floor, and he's pretty sure he wouldn't be able to break the glass, because that is his life. Fucking art school.

"Pepper," he tells her calmly, "you cannot quit. You are the one thing that is keeping this company going. Without you, we would _never_ be able to actually go up on opening night."

"That is correct," Pepper agrees regally. "Yes."

"And if you quit, you'll have to go work for HYDRA," he adds. "And _nobody_ wants to work for 'Hindered Youth Drama'. They work with _assholes_."

Pepper's head lolls a little, and she frowns at him. "They work with troubled youth, Phil," she says plainly, in a moment of lucidity.

"I'm not talking about the actors," Phil counters. "I'm talking about that _douche_ Obadiah. Seriously. That guy is such a—a—a _mewling quim._"

Pepper giggles. Phil thinks it might be the first time he's heard that sound come out of her mouth. "That's funny," she says, "because it's Shakespearean for _vagina_."

"Roughly," Phil agrees. "Will you stay?"

The redhead sighs heavily. She kicks her shoes off. "Oh-_kay_," she agrees, "_but_ you have to promise me that whenever I want to I can leave and if anyone annoys me I can set him or her on _fire_."

"Yeah, sure," Phil agrees, "except for the quitting and the pyromania, I agree to your terms."

"_Good_," Pepper says, and then wobbles out.

After a moment, he hears her stop and say, "Hey, _wait_—" but he has already shut the door.

.x.

[interval V: bruce]

When everyone else has left the auditorium, Bruce finishes cleaning up glass shards and sits despondently next to the broken light fixture. Of _course_ the _only _working light on this whole stupid stage would be the one that fell.

The thing is, Bruce is actually _good at this_. Or he used to be, before that _fucking_ production of _Titus Andronicus_, where he had caught a loose circuit and been shocked so badly that he'd ripped the wiring out of the spotlight just before the final monologue. Everything had started to flicker and burst, like some terrible fireworks show, and now every time he reaches into the brains and body of a light he can feel the shock run through him and see the flashes of his career dying.

He sighs. He _knows_ how to fix this. If he could just only ever do it _this_ way, with no one around, with no one _pressuring_ him, where he could take his time and—

"Hey, Bruce!"

Bruce has always thought Betty's voice sounded like bells. He pulls his hand quickly out of the light's innards and focuses on not dropping or breaking anything. "Oh! Uh. Hey, Betty."

She sits down beside him. "Bad luck about today. This was the good light, too, wasn't it?"

He nods glumly at the ground. Even _Betty_ knows he's only got one good working light, _God_. "Um, yeah, yeah it was."

She shrugs. He feels the movement of her shoulder against his. "Well, that's all right. I'm sure you can fix it." They sit in quiet for a minute before she asks, "hey, I'm going to go to the bar tonight with a couple of the cast members, do you want to come?" She giggles softly. "Actually, to tell you the truth, a few of the other women and I broke into Darcy's stash this afternoon. I didn't drink too much, but Pepper is _ploughed_. It could be funny to watch her and Tony square off."

Bruce considers saying yes, but Betty is probably just being nice, and anyway, if he wants to have any functioning lights by tomorrow he's going to have to work all night. "No, uh, thanks. I should . . . you know. Stay here. Fix stuff. Lights."

He wants to slap himself in the face. _Use verbs, Banner_, he thinks._ They're a staple of the English language_.

Betty is quiet for a moment. Then she says quietly, "Oh, okay. Sure. Well, just thought I'd, you know, extend the invitation." She stands, and her hand brushes against his shoulder. "Well, see you tomorrow, then," she murmurs, and is gone from the stage in a _swish_ of Lady Mortimer's skirts.

Bruce sighs.

.x.

[interval VI: tony]

"Seriously, dude?" he says, coming to sit next to Bruce and leaning against the broken backdrop.

Bruce looks up at him, surprised. "Tony! I thought you'd gone!"

"Didn't," Tony answers, because: obviously. "Wanted to wait until that douchebucket Steve had gone. I don't want to see his douchey face."

"Didn't you say last week that if you didn't hate him you'd date him?" Bruce asks, and don't think Tony doesn't hear the dry note in his voice, because Tony is a genius and totally does.

"I stand by it, but I hate him, so the point is moot," he says regally. "Anyway, how about we talk about the fact that Betty Ross just asked you out and you said no?"

"It wasn't—she didn't _ask me out_," Bruce protests, but his face—is he—oh God, is he _blushing_? Because seriously. _Seriously._ Tony had his first sexual experience when he was _fourteen_ (and yes, she was hot, and yes, she was in college, and no, she didn't know he was fourteen; Tony has always been hot for his age).

Tony shakes his head sadly. "Okay, Brucey. Whatever you say." He peers into the light fixture. "Hey, that's a cool way to wire it."

"It's a new thing I'm working on," Bruce answers, looking confident for the first time all day. "I was thinking, you know, if you put the wattage through the—"

"Is that a microchip?"

"Yeah! It makes it so Pepper doesn't have to push the buttons, it's all automated. And it can tell where people are, so it follows."

"Heat censor?"

"Up here, are you crazy? It would overload. _Movement _censor."

"But what about in the battle scenes, when things get crazy?"

Bruce shrugs. "Haven't gotten that far on it. Thoughts?"

Tony grins. He is an actor because fuck you, Dad, that's why, but he still loves chemistry and biology and circuitry and mechanics and all of the things he went to school for. He pulls out the chip and examines it.

"Let's take a look at this bad boy," he says.

.x.

[interval VII: jarvis]

Jarvis waits in the car for Master Tony. He is technically the man's paid butler, but he had once been his nanny, and he is now the company's janitor. Well, sort of. Jarvis isn't getting paid, so Jarvis doesn't bother to do much cleaning.

But he does have a sort of . . . affection for Master Tony, so he puts on his blues anthology and reclines the driver's seat. This is his very favorite part of the day.

He turns the music up so that he cannot hear the sound of Bruce and Tony blowing things up in the workshop.


	3. natasha is probably with the russian mob

[interval i: clint]

"This is just like Budapest," Natasha decides, three weeks in when they are still at the theater at ass o'clock in the morning and punchy on beer and chicken shawarma.

They are sitting in a desert of sawdust and broken glass, discarded wood and strewn nails. Two days ago, Bruce had accidentally set the fire alarm off when one of his light fixtures exploded, and the entire set had gone up in flames. He insists that the light had been working the night before, but—well, given his track record . . .

Anyway, they're rebuilding the whole thing. Hence the shawarma and the lack of sleep.

Clint raises his eyebrows. "You and I remember Budapest very differently," he says. "Because what I remember about Budapest is waking up in a jail cell, thinking that I had broken into the Kremlin and seduced a foreign dignitary."

Natasha rolls her eyes. "Which will teach you not to go drink-for-drink of absinthe with a family of Russians," she says, as if it should be obvious. "But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the show we saw the first night, the production of 'Opera Ball.'"

Clint frowns. He really doesn't remember much of the Budapest trip, because they'd gone to meet Natasha's adoptive father and the entire week had been essentially one long drinking binge. But it comes back slowly, in flashes—"They were all dressed as ducks, right?"

"Yeah."

"Didn't we hate it?"

She shrugs. "Well, yes. But the production value was great."

Clint leans back on his elbows. "Not inspiring a lot of confidence here, Tash."

Natasha shakes her head. "That's because you're an idiot," she tells him flatly. "Look. Bruce is terrible at basically everything, but he's not _this_ terrible." She gestures to the wreckage around them.

"I _heard_ that," says Bruce's voice from the catwalk above them.

"That's wonderful for you," Natasha calls back, but Clint sees just the tiniest hint of a smile on her lips. She's always been a bit of a sucker for the hopeless cases. "What I'm _saying_ is, there is a certain theater company on the other side of town that is putting on their production the same week we are. It would behoove them to have ours go belly-up."

Bruce drops suddenly onto one of the shavings piles. Clint isn't sure if it's on purpose or not. "Wait wait wait," Bruce says, shaking sawdust out of his hair, "you mean . . . _sabotage_?"

"But isn't Theo . . . sorry, _Thor_'s brother the art director of that company?" Clint asks. "Why would he try to hurt his own brother's play?"

"They don't call Leonard 'the God of Mischief' because he _doesn't_ like to fuck with people," Natasha says dryly.

"They _are_ pretty competitive," Bruce admits, scratching his chin in thought.

Clint sighs, leaning back on his elbows. "Seriously, _this_ is why I only come back here in the summers. You people need _lives_."

Bruce looks toward Natasha. "So . . . what's the plan?" he asks.

Natasha grins.

.x.

Most of the cast and crew go to Marvel's Pub after rehearsals to blow off steam, but Phil usually refrains. He doesn't like to spend that much time around his charges—that is, employees.

Sometimes, however, the draw of getting super, super, _shit faced_ drunk appeals too much to resist, such as today, when he has no set, no lighting, and the threat of getting kicked out of his venue for being a massive fire hazard.

He had tried convincing the fire department that it was his _cast_, and not his set, that was the fire hazard, but it hadn't made much of a difference.

And to top it all off, before the end of rehearsals, Natasha had walked up to him, dropped the last of her designs into his lap, and said, "Hey. I quit. Here are the designs; don't let Darcy tell you that she doesn't know how to sew, because she is a liar. Jane too."

"What?" Phil had asked, dumbstruck. "You're—_what_?"

"Yep," Natasha had told him, almost cheerful, for her. "Got a better offer. Costumes _and_ a lead role."

"But you _hate_ acting!"

"Yes," she'd agreed, and given him a Look that was clearly supposed to mean something, and then gone.

Now Phil is staring down into his drink and trying to figure out how to tell his cast that their costume designer has abandoned them to work for fucking HYDRA, that stupid fucking cast of juvenile delinquents.

Jane and Darcy are sipping Bloody Marys. Well. Phil says 'sipping.'

"I'd say 'fuck her,' but I'm afraid she'll appear out of nowhere and kill me," Darcy says darkly into her cup.

"Shhhh, she can probably hear you _thinking_ it," Jane hisses.

"What are we going to do?" Phil asks.

Nick turns his head so that he can meet Phil's gaze with his good eye. "On the other hand, this really frees up some funds, now that we don't have to pay her salary."

Phil really hates Nick Fury.

"Dude, you have the tact of like, a set of hairy balls," Darcy says.

"_Darcy_," Jane scolds.

The brunette shrugs. "It's totally true. Nick Fury, if you were a blowjob—"

"Just stop it right now," Jane says, her tone sharp. "Nick. I'm sorry."

The one-eyed man shrugs. "You don't pay me to be tactful, Jane. You pay me to keep your company from going under. If I don't take the initiative, I can't do that."

"She didn't leave us totally fucked," Phil reminds them. "We have her designs, and they look pretty simple, compared to what she usually comes up with. At least there are no live animals involved in any of them."

"Fucking _bears_," mutters Jane.

Darcy sighs, and takes another swallow of her drink. "I can sew pretty okay. I mean, I'm no Natasha, but I can probably make a fairly decent imitation if I follow her instructions. How hard can it be?"

Jane stirs her ice miserably. "You know how in the Hunger Games, Katniss's dress fake-burns off and reveals another dress, and everyone thinks it's badass and impossible?" she asks.

"Yeah . . ."

"Natasha once called that 'grade school stuff.' Have you ever seen the inside of her Red Room?"

Nick frowns. "What's the Red Room?"

"Her workshop at home. It's looks like what would happen if a torture chamber and Reese Witherspoon in 'Legally Blonde' had a baby."

Phil pours himself another beer. "Everything is terrible," he declares, "and I'm going back to school to get a fucking _business_ degree."

.x.

[interval ii: tony]

Fuck _Steve,_ man. So the dude can drink three Irish Car Bombs and still win at darts. So _what_? That's what Tony wants to know. He's still stupid. He's like a fucking _Boy Scout._

"Asshat," he mutters under his breath.

"Who-o-ah," says Steve's roommate Bucky, grabbing Steve's arm as he lurches toward Tony. "Easy now, Cap."

And that's another thing. Captain _America_? How the hell did stupid Steve get that stupid fucking nickname? Like he was just _soooo_ perfect in military school that all the guys looked up to him and thought he was the all-around American Hero, well, fuck that. Tony went to Harvard at age _twelve_. So what if Steve has the perfect body and a chiseled chin and likes to help old ladies across the street. Tony invented _self-aware robots._

"What is your _problem_, Stark?" Steve asks, shaking Bucky off. But he doesn't look like he's going to attack anymore, because of course he doesn't, because he's just _sooo_ decent that he doesn't want to let things get out of control.

And that's the real fucking problem, isn't it, because Steve Rogers is Mr. In Control, and that is _so. fucking. annoying._ Steve Rogers just has it all together and Tony is a hot fucking mess and he just wants to punch the Boy Scout off that stupid handsome face.

"My problem?" Tony asks, even as Happy and Rhodey leave off their pool game to come stand behind him, half as back up and half as preventative measures. "_My_ problem? You're like a six-foot-infinity Abstinence-Only Posterboy!"

"First of all, it's the only way to guarantee safety," Steve snaps. "And sorry I'm not a five-foot-eight_whore._"

"I am not a _whore_!" Tony cries, then reconsiders. "Okay. I am a little bit of a whore." Then he brightens. "But only because everyone wants a taste of my _awesome._" He pauses. "I wonder if I can market that. Maybe Stark Industries should start investing in condoms."

Rhodey snorts from behind him. "I'm sure Obadiah would _love_ that business plan," he says quietly.

"Obadiah can suck it," Tony replies, suddenly cheerful. "Anyway, it's my company. And anyway, investing in safe sex is investing in our future. Never let it be said that Stark Industries doesn't care about its people."

Steve huffs. "Stark Industries doesn't give a shit about _people_," he says snidely. "It's a fucking _weapons developer._"

Happy touches Tony's wrist in warning, but it's too late, because he's already throwing the punch.

.x.

[interval iii: steve]

The hit comes from nowhere and takes him by surprise; he goes down. But he gets right the _fuck_ back up, because this has been coming a _long_ time.

"Easy boys," Bucky says, but Steve ignores him, because it is _time._ It's time to knock the smug bastard off his fucking pedestal, who does he think he is, anyway? Like just because he's a billionaire genius he can walk all over people, lording it over their heads that by some freak twist of nature he learned to read six months out of the womb?

Steve's not sure how they get outside, but they do, he and Tony rolling around on the ground as he tries to get a fucking _hit_ in, but Tony's like a little spider monkey, clinging to his back. He doesn't weigh anything. Tony is—objectively—an attractive guy, but he's a nerd, for all his bravado, and he's little. He's not built, like Steve. He didn't go to military school, like Steve. He doesn't know how to throw a punch like Steve.

So as soon as he shakes him free, Steve socks him one, and Tony hits the ground _hard._ He sits there for a moment, dazed, and Steve brushes his hands off, because there. He's won. It's finally—

But Tony, the fucker, _gets up_, kind of to Steve's surprise because he's bleeding out of his nose and one of his ears and this is clearly not a fight he can win. But Tony is grinning anyway and Steve is like: okay, if that's how you want it.

"You're _losing_," Steve reminds him, and Tony's laugh is raw and rough when he says, "No _shit,_you're like the Iron fucking Giant."

But he hits Steve anyway. Steve will have a black eye in the morning and he's pretty sure he's bitten a chunk out of his tongue, but he's still coming off better than Tony.

"Dude," he says after a few minutes, hesitant, "give _up._"

Tony is breathing heavily, hands on his knees. "No."

"You're not going to beat me! Look man, I'm not even trying to rub it in, you're just . . . kinda little."

Tony leans up against Marvel's wall. "Yeah. I can see that, Captain Obvious."

Steve comes to rest beside him. "So why the hell are you still fighting?"

Tony doesn't answer, but spits blood onto the cement. Steve waits. After a few minutes, Tony says, "We're not."

"Not what?"

"A weapons developer, dickwad."

"What?"

"Stark Industries. We used to, before . . . but we don't have anything to do with military shit anymore."

Steve frowns. "Before . . . what?"

"My Dad," Tony says, and then passes out.

.x.

[interval iv: darcy]

"Seriously, you have _got_to get your own place," she tells Bucky, sighing under Tony's weight. Steve had gone in ahead to unlock the door, and they are dragging the unconscious Tony between them. "I'm_totally_ not having sex with you in an apartment with two other dudes longing homoerotically after one another in the next room."

"Aw, c'mon," Bucky says as they get into the elevator. "It's just one dude. Tony's passed out."

"He's probably dreaming coma dreams about getting all up in Cap's business," Darcy says darkly, and Steve clears his throat.

"Uh, I'm actually in the elevator," he points out, and Darcy shoots him a glare. Bucky and Steve are College Bros who never branched out, and Steve is the only one left who doesn't realize that the back-and-forth with Tony is just their "Don't Ask/Don't Tell" way of flirting. But like: they work in a _theater company._ Being straight is weirder than being gay.

Military men. Darcy just doesn't get 'em.

"That's great for you, Americana," she says. "You're also the elephant in the room making it impossible for me to get laid tonight."

"Look, Darcy, I don't know why you think that—"

"Steve," Bucky interrupts gently, "I know you're sure that you're not into Tony for his sexual prowess, and that's fine, but could you maybe just nod and agree blindly to what my girlfriend says? Just this once? Because otherwise there's totally no way I am getting any."

Darcy snorts. "Too little, too late, bucko."

Bucky slumps. "Not fair," he mutters. "How come _Steve's_marital problems are keeping _us_ from enjoying ourselves?"

"They're not _marital_—"

"Because all I'll be able to think about is all the many ways that Steve is going to fuck this up when Tony wakes," Darcy says. "Because Tony's going to be all AHHH I WAS SO DRUNK, did I kick your ass? Bet I did! and then Steve going to be like, No Tony, you didn't, let's not talk about how adorable you were lying on my bed, and then Tony's going to be like, Obnoxious Comment, and Steve's going to be like, I'm Offended, and really all he should have done is shut his stupid mouth and offered the boy breakfast."

"Seriously, Darcy, I am not attracted to—"

"Well, yeah, but we can only do so much for them," Bucky reminds her, in that stupid _logic_ voice of his. "If Steve and Tony want to play the Sexy Banter game forever . . ."

"It is not _sexy bant_—"

"Meanwhile never asking why Tony freaked out about the weapon thing," Darcy says smoothly, talking over Steve. The blonde falls silent, because _duh_ he wants to know. "All of this could have been avoided if Steve had just bothered to pay attention to current events and knew that four years ago, Tony's Dad was taken by hostiles in the Middle East and died out there, and that Stark weaponry had been what was used against the convoy, and that ever since, Tony refuses to have anything to do with weapons in his company."

Steve is quiet. _Good_, Darcy thinks. Why are boys so fucking stupid? She'd totally be a lesbian if she were more interested in vaginas and less attracted to Bucky "Handsome-Face" Barnes.

"Oh," says Steve.

"Moron," says Darcy.

.x.

[interval v: bruce]

"And we're sure this is a good idea?" Bruce asks Clint out of the side of his mouth.

Clint raises his eyebrows. "I am absolutely never sure of anything with Natasha," he murmurs dryly. "Just go along with it and assume she'll bail you out of jail."

"I feel terrified," Bruce says, "and _awesome_."

They are in a warehouse that Natasha had inexplicably brought them to, where at the door two heavyset men had talked to her in Russian. She had then disappeared into a back room, and left Clint and Bruce with the heavyset men, who are not speaking to them. They have guns in holsters on their sides, and did Bruce somehow fall into an episode of _The Sopranos_?

When Natasha reemerges, she kisses the cheek of a short, fat man with a gun on either side of his hips and a thick cigar in his mouth. "Dasvi-daniya, Uncle Anton," she says. "Spaseeba."

"Remember, you get caught, you take the fall," Uncle Anton says, and Natasha rolls her eyes.

"Who are you talking to?" she asks. "Do I ever get caught?"

"What about that Budapest thing?"

She makes a _pfft_ sound. "I handled it, didn't I?"

"Still. The _Kremlin_, Natasha?"

Natasha shrugs and kisses him again. "Papa Ivan and I are ambitious," she says cheerfully. She walks towards them. "Right, let's go. I'll have the stuff delivered by the time we get home."

Clint has gone pale. "Natasha," he hisses, "it's not possible that I _actually_ broke into the Kremlin, is it?"

She cuts him a look. "Really want to know?" she asks, and Clint looks like he's going to be sick.

"I fucking _hate you_," he hisses.

Bruce most definitely _does not_ want to know.

"Are we going to jail for this?" he asks, and then adds hurriedly, "you know what, never mind. I'm probably safer the less I know."

Natasha grins. "I'm starting to like you, Banner," she says, and Bruce wants to be above flattery, but he's not, so he flushes red and cracks his knuckles.

"This is the most badass thing I've ever not known I was doing," he says.


End file.
